McCain Launches Environmental Campaign
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Energy, Environment, McCain, VideoFor the next couple weeks he’ll be talking about how we can address these problems.
And maybe in a sign of how progressive McCain seems to be on the environment, the Sierra Club says they may not endorse anybody in 2008.
In a sign of Sen. McCain’s potential appeal to environmentally conscious voters, a top official at the Sierra Club, one of the nation’s most influential environmental groups, said the group might not endorse any candidate for president. The group endorsed Democrats in six of the past seven presidential elections; it declined to endorse a candidate in 1988.
However…
“He’s certainly better than Bush, and … the average Republican senator” on environmental matters, but “dramatically worse than the average Republican governor,” Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in an interview.
The biggest difference between McCain and Obama? McCain favors massive investment in nuclear energy and Obama favors massive investment into green tech that doesn’t produce massive amounts of nuclear waste, like wind turbines. And while I’m not opposed to nuclear energy, I also know it’s going to cost hundreds of billions and take a LONG time to get running, so I’d rather start investing in wind to help lower greenhouse gases immediately.
To close, here’s an ad McCain is putting up in Oregon on his environmental policy.
I think the “high taxes and crippling regulations” line will come back to haunt McCain because he’s going to have to do something to pay for his nuclear plants. As mentioned, they’re incredibly expensive and we wouldn’t see any dividends until a decade after they’re first started.
This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Energy, Environment, McCain, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 12th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
<blockquote?Obama favors massive investment into green tech that doesn’t produce massive amounts of nuclear waste, like wind turbines. …and also doesn’t produce massive amounts of energy, like nuclear reactors.
May 12th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
That is a very good point, Jimmy. Comparing wind energy with nuclear power is like comparing little league team with the Yankees. Not in the same league, hardly playing the same sport, in terms of energy generation compacity. And that is regardless how big Obama’s subsidy (…oh, err, sorry…investment) is.
Please do me a favor in this area, Justin. Seriously, if you want to do the environment good, please listen (I’m not sincere very often): Just tax the negative externality — you don’t like carbon emissions, then tax the hell out of carbon ($80 a ton) and let the utilities deal with finding alternative energy sources, whatever it may be — hydro, solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, exc.. Please do not pick “your favorite green energy” and ask the government to subsidize it, because Obama does not know things like — wind is great except when the wind doesn’t blow and the capital costs to kW generated, particularly without PTC, does not pretty picture make. There are other sources of clean renewable energy, but the second the government starts subsidizing they create market entrant barriers and rent-seeking.